


Carves into my Hollow

by sarkywoman



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Suicide, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2019-03-25 04:13:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13826238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarkywoman/pseuds/sarkywoman
Summary: Zombie AU. 'Jack had no trouble pruning the sick from the herd. Vaughn thought he and Rhys would need to look out for one another. He underestimated the resiliency of Rhys' ambition.'





	Carves into my Hollow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for... a secret santa, I think it was. I'm in the process of cross-posting fic I never got round to putting on AO3.

It's eerily quiet in the van now. Their little survival squad has halved in size.

Vaughn knows from the itching at his collarbone that they will soon be down one more. 

He's resigned to it now. At first he was terrified, barely able to keep his panic under wraps as he ran after Rhys, Jack and Angel as fast as his short legs could carry him. Only determination to see Rhys back safely had kept him from freaking out. By the time they were back in the van and away from the horde, Vaughn's original terror had eased off a little.

That is probably the infection though. Fiona had gone much the same way, growing calmer and slower as the purple glow spread through her. A slow death from the inside. 

He regrets his sacrifice a little, but only a little. As soon as he contemplates an alternate world where he had not thrown himself over Rhys' unconscious body, Vaughn quickly realises it was the only option. He can't imagine sitting here now, watching Rhys slip into the slow coma of the undead. The thought is still enough to bring a tear to his eye. 

Handsome Jack emerges from behind the partition in the back of the van, where he had carried Rhys after dragging them both out from the pile of hungry corpses. Vaughn stands to greet the man.

“Is he--”

At Jack's cold stare and finger to the lips, Vaughn falls silent. Jack walks over slowly, more predator than the thing that sank its teeth into Vaughn's neck and tugged away a chunk of flesh. When he's right up close, Jack hooks his fingers around Vaughn's collar and drags it down just far enough to see the bitemark.

“Let's not wake Rhys over this,” Jack says, so quiet that he's barely speaking above a whisper. “It'll break his heart.”

“I'm sure he'll hear when you shoot me in the head.”

Jack had no trouble pruning the sick from the herd. Vaughn thought he and Rhys would need to look out for one another. He underestimated the resiliency of Rhys' ambition. Even at the end of the world he gravitated towards power and wealth, doing whatever it took to earn Handsome Jack's attention. It brought up memories of a hundred parties Vaughn spent as the third wheel, hundreds of lonely lunches and too many nights spent trying not to listen to someone else saying Rhys' name on the other side of the bedroom wall. 

This time Vaughn isn't going to be there to pick up the pieces.

“I'm not gonna shoot ya, short stuff. Not worth the ammo. We're running short.”

“Then what...”

“You're going to pick a direction and start walking. You're not gonna stop. Then I'm gonna start driving in the opposite direction and tell Rhys how brave you were when he wakes up. Sound fair? Or do you wanna wait until you're gnawing at his skull?”

“Will you take care of him?”

The man shrugs.

“Don't see I've got much of a choice. Not if I want some company I can bang out here.”

It's not nearly enough. Rhys deserves... well. Rhys doesn't really deserve better, but Vaughn wants him to have it regardless. Not many options at the end of the world though.

When Jack opens the door, Vaughn steps out of the van without another word. There's no point in fighting. He's a dead man walking and it will only get worse. He'll let Rhys remember him as he was and let Jack tell whatever stories he has to. 

Angel is keeping watch from the roof with a sniper rifle. She slides down the ladder at the side of the van and rushes to his side. “Where are you going?”

“I'm infected, Angel.”

Her blue eyes widen. She takes a step back, looking utterly distraught. Then she asks too many questions. 

Vaughn gives her platitudes until her father looms in the doorway and calls her inside. She's reluctant to go and Vaughn's moved by her sweetness. But she does go, slinking past her father into the darkness of the van with a sorry look over her shoulder.

Jack nods towards the horizon.

Slowly Vaughn starts walking. About ten steps away he hears the van door shut. 

Twenty steps and he hears the van's engine rumble. It's loud in the silence of the Pandoran desert.

Then it's quieter and quieter until he's truly alone.

(/\\)

Angel hoped the peculiarities of her blood would protect her from the infection. She has been exposed to eridium for years, had it pushed into her bloodstream by her power-hungry father. He would claim he was seeking knowledge, but it had always been power. 

As she follows him and Rhys into an abandoned Dahl facility, Angel realises her hope was misplaced. The bite on her arm has been throbbing and itching for hours but her whole arm is shaking now. The shotgun judders against her body as she tries to hold it still. Her fingers are purpling, the veins glowing beneath the skin. 

Her dad had shot August as soon as he was bitten. He figured out what was going on as soon as Hugo Vasquez started itching. His lack of compassion had kept them all alive.

Well, it had kept himself, her and Rhys alive. 

But now she follows them with a growing nausea, fingers aflame with infection, feet beginning to drag with the effort of movement. He doesn't see it. 

He won't see it until she starts to gnaw at them, Angel realises. He's too used to having her there. He has 'protected' her so easily for so long that he takes it for granted now. His worry is spent more on Rhys, his devoted fanboy who is smart in all the wrong ways for their current circumstances. Her dad's gaze goes over to Rhys about five times for every time he glances back at her. She can't blame him. If anyone is going to trip up and bring a horde of zombies down on them, it will be Rhys. He has only survived this long by being fond of her dad. 

She wonders how long that will save him. If her dad loses them both, will he just carry on? On and on, fighting through the undead until he's the only thing left on the planet? Or will he give up? Angel can't imagine him being so sentimental. Not like sweet Vaughn, who told her before stepping out into the night that true survival meant more than breathing. 

Looking at Rhys' back as he nervously steps through the dim corridors in her father's footsteps, she wants to tell him. Wants to explain why Vaughn left. They know he was infected, but that's not the whole of it. He could have stayed until the urge to kill threatened all of them. He chose otherwise.

She's not sure she loves her dad, but she's a better person than him. She can make the same choice as Vaughn. For morality if not for love.

“Dad...”

“What is it, Angel?”

“I'm infected.”

His ratty trainers squeak to a stop on the dirty floor and he whirls around glaring. “Not funny.”

Angel pulls back her sleeve. She needn't have worried about seeing it in the dark – her whole arm is pulsing with a purple glow. It's a very beautiful poison. Her dad looks struck in a way she's never seen. He reaches out for her arm then snatches his hand back as if burned before he even touches her. 

Rhys backs away from her until he knocks into an old shelving unit and knocks everything down in a crash. He skitters back to them, eyes wide with guilt and apology though unwilling to utter a word.

They all stand in silence. A tableau of dread. 

The groaning starts nearby. Far too near. Her dad swears and starts back down the corridor to the door they entered through. That's where the first zombies lurch in looking for the source of the sound. He draws his pistol and starts shooting.

“Shotgun, Angel! Shotgun!”

Her hands tremble as she fires. She gets a couple, then her shot goes wide and it's time to reload. She fumbles with the box and drops it, letting loose a swear of her own. Her fingers feel numb. She feels cold deep in her stomach. Rhys backs up with his shock stick sparking blue. He's the last person who should be wielding a melee weapon. 

Pistol fire is loud over the growls and groans of their attackers until suddenly it stops.

“Shit! No ammo. Angel, you got--”

A scream from Rhys cuts them off as zombies pour in through the door at the right of the corridor, staggering in between Angel and her dad. Near enough to grab her hair. She gives up on finding the box on the floor and runs back with Rhys towards the stairs. She makes it up two then slips to her knees on the metal in a way that really should have hurt. Her legs are numb.

For all his cowardice, Rhys has stopped at the bottom of the stairs looking back for her dad.

“Jack!”

“Go! Get her out of here, Rhys!”

Rhys looks back at her and their eyes meet. He doesn't say anything but she knows in an instant that he's not risking anything for her. He wept when Vaughn left and when Fiona put her gun to her head. He might even weep for Angel. But he hadn't done anything. Since this whole thing started his least passive activity has been to latch onto her dad with more hunger than the most starving of the undead. 

He breaks the eye contact and runs back into the fray with his stun baton waving above his head. His frantic flailing achieves a small gap through which her dad bursts, grabbing Rhys and shoving him ahead.

“Go, you maniac, go!”

She's too tired to stand. Her dad says nothing as he scoops her up and chases Rhys up the stairs. They're breaking his rule about getting trapped. The door upstairs leads out onto the roof and there's nowhere else to go. Once her dad's carried her through, Rhys slams the door shut and starts looking for a way to secure it. She's set down on the ground as her dad grabs a nearby lock and chains. As he and Rhys work out how to fasten it around the door, Angel looks out over the expanse of poisoned Pandora.

She walks to the edge of the roof. She can see for miles up here. It shouldn't have taken this long for her to be breathing in real non-filtered air. It shouldn't have taken an apocalypse for her dad to free her. If he had only been a better father she would never have had to compromise the experiments in the first place. 

“I did this,” she finally whispers aloud. Puts her confession out to Pandora, her unfortunate victim. “I doomed us all.”

“Angel! Get back from there!”

Why though? She holds out her arm, then the other. They're both glowing now, the infection spreading. Already she feels the numbness has spread in her mind as well as her body. The fear is going away. She can't let that fool her. There is a lot to be afraid of.

“You listening to me, Angel? Get down here now!”

Turning to face them, her larger-than-life father looks so small. She wonders how he always seemed indestructible. She imagined him living forever. Winning.

But they'll die. Maybe not here, maybe not for a week. Maybe they'll last a month or two. But they don't have a hope. 

“Vaughn loved you,” she tells Rhys, whose eyes widen at the words as if he had never considered it. How could he not have? “That bite was meant for you. He didn't see the point of going on without you though.” With a sigh she looks out over Pandora again. It's beautiful in a broken way. Beautiful like the eridium in her veins killing her. “I hope you love each other that way. You know, if either of you actually remember what love is.”

Her dad lets out an angry sound and she's already imagining his outraged argument when she steps off of the roof. _“How can you say that, Angel? Of course I love you! I've always tried to protect you! How can you--”_

She does love him, she realises. Beneath the numbness she resents him a little more for that.

Then she hits the ground.

(/\\)

For a while Jack doesn't move. He's staring at the building's ledge as if any moment his daughter will float up to it again, glowing and holy as her namesake. Rhys tugs at his arm but the man stands like a stone. The sounds of the dead grow louder. The thumping of their movements grows nearer. A metallic clunking makes Rhys think of the empty canister they had passed on the stairs being knocked aside by shambling corpses. They're near.

“Jack!”

He's seen the shock take them, had the shock take him himself, but he had thought Handsome Jack somehow immune. Just a different breaking point, as it happens. He can't allow it. Jack _can't_ break. He's the only thing keeping Rhys together. It's more than a physical survival. 

The door creaks. Fingers grope blindly around the edges, digits gnawed and hanging and coated in dry blood, looking as though they've been through a lawnmower. The chain and padlock shake as the door is shoved at. The pressure of a hundred corpses pushes at it and it's the hinges that are creaking, whining as they're strained beyond intent.

“Please, Jack, we've gotta go!”

Jack's boots drag as he walks slowly over to the ledge, shaking Rhys' arm off as though there is no grip there at all. He stands at the very edge and looks over. His mouth twists, lips wobbling for a moment and Rhys is witnessing the most emotion Jack has ever shown. 

Rhys swallows, nervously. If Jack follows his daughter, Rhys will be alone. Too scared to fling himself off of the edge, too weak to fight the zombie horde.

“They're coming, Jack.”

Not even a glance of acknowledgement.

The door bursts off of the roof hatch and Rhys lets out a shriek. Jack doesn't move. The zombies in their leather masks and worn Pandoran rags all turn their heads to the sound. Rhys shakes Jack's shoulder frantically but the man doesn't move. He's given up. 

Most of the undead lurch on decaying limbs but the newer ones lunge. Rhys screams again and darts back, only to find his left foot doesn't land on anything. He's at the edge of the roof and falling, until Jack's hand snaps out and fists in his shirt, tugging him back to put two feet on the floor. The man's heterochromatic eyes glance around the roof before focusing on something.

“Fire escape!”

He points out the metal frame leading over the edge of the building and presumably down to the ground. Sure, they only need to run through the whole damn gang of people-eating corpses. But when Jack grabs him by the wrist and pulls, it doesn't occur to Rhys to argue or resist. Jack is an irresistible force and he shoves his way through the undead like they're a horde of flimsy fans asking for his autograph. He drags Rhys along in his wake and they grab at him, fingers scrabbling down his body. One claws at his arm.

When they reach the fire escape Jack looks over the edge. “We'll make it, go!”

They both scramble over. Jack shoves Rhys ahead first, but he's close enough that Rhys can feel the heat of him and the brush of his panting breaths.

As luck would have it, the fire escape doesn't quite reach the ground. Undoubtedly bandits wrestled it off some time ago for more nefarious uses. When Rhys hesitates Jack swears and pushes past him, dropping off the edge and landing on his feet with only a slight stumble. He looks up to Rhys and holds his arms out. Nearby a few shuffling corpses start making their way over.

“Jump, Rhys. Now.”

“But I'm heavier than I look and--”

A corpse lands heavily beside him, shaking the whole structure. Rhys throws himself down to Jack with a scream. 

“Oof, you weren't lying,” Jack says as he lets him down onto his feet. “You seemed lighter when I put your back against a wall. How can you still be heavy when we're fucking starving?”

“Dense bones?”

They stop joking then and run for their lives. The van is parked around the corner of the ravaged facility and it's not an easy sprint there. Twice Jack grabs him to detour him from a path that Rhys thought to be best. 

Still, they make it, both gasping for breath as they slam the door shut against their pursuers. Jack runs to the front and puts the pedal to the metal. They barely picked up anything from their costly adventure and Rhys has a sinking feeling it's going to be like this from here on out. 

About half an hour later Jack has them out in the Pandoran wilds. The biggest threat out here is the local fauna and none of that will attack unless they try and venture out of the van. They're as safe as they're likely to get. Jack shuts off the engine and comes back to sit with Rhys in the 'home' area, but stops about a metre away from him and narrows his eyes. 

“Let me see.”

“Huh?”

For a second Rhys isn't sure what he means, then he sees Jack scowling at where Rhys is scratching at his arm. He hadn't even noticed he was doing it. Jack strides over and starts unbuttoning the cuff of Rhys' shirt sleeve.

“One of them scratched me while we were getting away. It's not...”

Rhys falls silent when the sleeve rolls up to reveal an angry red bitemark. The skin around it is already turning purple with the dull glow of the tainted eridium infection. He starts to shake.

“Oh.”

Jack just stares at it, eyes wide and shocked as they had been when Angel revealed her secret infection. Rhys doesn't have a building to fling himself from. It'll have to be a shot to the head. Have they got more ammo in the van? They ran out of the ammo they took to the facility.

“I'm sorry,” he says to Jack, voice high and weak with fright. “I didn't realise.” He was going to leave Jack all alone at the end of the world. 

“You fucking idiot. You _fucking_ moron. I... you stupid, stupid...”

After the insults trail off into a short while of silence, Jack's gaze hardens into something purposeful. It's the same look he wore when he shot August, or when they abandoned Sasha. Rhys is almost reassured to see it, even though it probably doesn't bode well for him. It means Jack is still there, still fighting.

The man marches over to one of the cabinets and grabs a knife. It glints in the light shining through the van windows.

“Um.”

He storms back over and Rhys draws back, huddling up afraid on the seat. He should probably take his death in a braver fashion but Jack's firm resolve suddenly looks a lot more like fervent mania.

“Give me your arm, Rhysie.”

“What? Jack...”

“Arm. Now.”

Rhys shakes his head. He's seen a lot of scary shit the past couple of months, but it peaks at seeing Jack go from his only lifeline to... whatever the hell this is. He clambers back over the chair so that it's between them. 

“We don't know amputation will work.”

“Don't know it won't. It's worth the risk, cupcake.”

“Jack, please.”

“You're not leaving me, Rhysie.”

Trying to run is a bad idea and it doesn't get him anywhere. Jack takes his legs out from under him with a well-placed boot and Rhys yelps as he hits the hard wooden floor. Jack steps over him and looks down in such a way that it would be like one of Rhys' fantasies if not for the knife in his hand. 

Jack moves to straddle him and for some reason, unfastens his belt. He whips it from the loops and puts it into Rhys' mouth, silencing his protests with the taste of leather.

“You'll wanna bite down on that cupcake. This is really going to hurt.”

At least the knife is sharp. Rhys' initial whimper of pain turns into a scream as the knife saws into him, slicing through skin and muscle, going for the joint. He feels it scratch the bone instead.

He barely hears Jack's soothing words, screaming until he can't breathe. Until everything goes black.

(/\\)

Rhys is amorous in the dying light of the Pandoran sunset and the warm light still flickering from the flames of the burning bandit camp. His weight wriggles in Jack's lap, his teeth nipping playfully at the skin stretched over Jack's collarbone. The sun wavers over the expanse of sand and horror, almost looking as though it wobbles behind the clouds. The light paints a red glow over Rhys' bare back, the dashboard of their vehicle keeping him shadowed below the waist. How tasteful.

If Jack could paint he still wouldn't attempt something this pretentious. People would read all sorts of things into it. Love, lust, passion at the end of the world. A love picked at by danger and death and desolation. Douchebags in galleries would stare at the painting talking about the protective gesture of Jack's hand where he cups the back of Rhys' head. 

A painting wouldn't show the fevered desperation of Rhys' movements. If it was anywhere near realistic then the weird lighting would obscure the bloody bandage at his shoulder. Even if he was a freakin' master of art and all things paint, Jack didn't think he could accurately portray the detail of the blood under the nails that he gently runs through Rhys' hair. With the viewers presumably looking at Rhysie's pretty back, they'd miss out on the tears streaked down his cheeks. 

“Jack...”

He shakes his head a little, tries to wake up some. It's a pretty hopeless endeavour. He's running on empty, like the van. And much like the van he's broken down in the middle of nowhere while trying to shield this scrawny idiot from a fate worse than death.

“Are you still mad at me?”

“Nah.”

Gently he runs his hands through Rhys' hair again. It's the only soothing gesture he can think of. It's a lie anyway, he's mad as hell. But there's no point in it anymore. He's too fucking tired to keep shouting about Rhys' idiocy, about the fact that they're the only ones left. Easier to vent their feelings this way, dirty, naked, desperate, clinging. Going out with a bang and a whimper. Rhys' whimper, of course. Jack grunts. Deep, manly sounds of pleasure.

Afterwards, Rhys curls up against him like they're lovers in Jack's apartment snuggling up for winter. Like one of them will wake the other with a cooked breakfast and an idea of what to do with the day.

With the sun down the desert is cooling fast and Rhys' scrawny body loses heat quickly. Jack doesn't notice until the kid unleashes a full-body shudder of cold. 

“You should get dressed.”

Not like he doesn't appreciate the skin-on-skin contact. It's good to have a human connection left, probably. Angel would have said so. 

_“It's okay, dad. You'll be okay.”_

Him and who else, though? Another shudder from Rhys, who's mostly asleep against him, and Jack tightens his hold while he reaches down to their feet for the discarded clothes. The shirt is mangled, of course. There hadn't been any time and now Jack looks at the bloodied and shorn shoulder of the fabric and hears Rhys' screams echoing as loudly as if they were back in the moment.

He throws the shirt back over his shoulder into the roomier part of the van. Maybe he should have taken Rhys down there when he stumbled up to the driver's seat, one-armed and shaken. Would have been easier to fuck on a bed.

Too late now. For lots of things. He struggles awkwardly out of his own coat without toppling Rhys from his lap. Then he drapes it around him. Rhys sighs as if there's nowhere else he'd rather be. Jack's seen more unpleasant reactions to horror, but none as dangerous as denial. He carries on petting his broken boy.

“Don't you worry, cupcake. I'll get us through this.”

“I know,” Rhys says, sleepy and relaxed.

As if Jack didn't hack off his arm. 

As if he's forgotten the corpses they've left behind them.

And all the ones that walk ahead.


End file.
